Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861 19th century
The certainty that nothing is small, and that God sometimes answers too fast.
Who was Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Ill and shut in for years in her father's house in London, she read, translated Greek and published poems that made her famous before Robert Browning was. She married him secretly at forty, left for Florence, bore a son there, and wrote against slavery and against child labour in the mines. The dissenting faith of her childhood runs through all her work, down to the novel in verse she left as a testament.
In their own words
Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes.
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, and thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, a gauntlet with a gift in't.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.